You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she’ll be old, only you don’t see her grow old. But...

You are — your life, and nothing else.

…freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.

certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don’t see anything anymore: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what...

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they...

The first crime was mine: I committed it when I made man mortal. Once I had done that, what was left for you, poor human murderers, to do? To kill your victims? But they already...

Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.

Hell is—other people!

Et voilà, mon passé n’est plus qu’un trou énorme. Mon présent: cette bonne au corsage noir qui rêve près du comptoir, ce petit bonhomme. Tout ce que je sais de ma vie, il me semble...

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down...

I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon.

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: “It shines like a little diamond”,”What does?””This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.

It isn’t freedom from. It’s freedom to.

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into the sty of the immediate — which is to say, the memoryless existence of hymenoptera and gastropods. None of this...

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he...

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

Commitment is an act, not a word

He takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness: when this man is lonely he sleeps.

Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I...

He was free, free for everything, free to act like an animal or like a machine.

It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot...

Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it any more. My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer...

I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is...

It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there’s no end to them and they leave a funny taste in...

I murmur: “It’s a seat,” a little like an exorcism. But the word stays on my lips: it refuses to go and put itself on the thing. It stays what it is, with its red...

L’existentialiste, au contraire, pense qu’il est très gênant que Dieu n’existe pas, car avec lui disparaît toute possibilité de trouver des valeurs dans un ciel intelligible; il ne peut plus y avoir de bien a...

The aim of language…is to communicate…to impart to others the results one has obtained…As I talk, I reveal the situation…I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.

Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you’re thirsty — that would be very much too simple! If you didn’t harbour a temptation eternally in your soul, you’d run the risk of forgetting yourself.

Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon...

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene...

Tu ești pentru mine relația necesară. Toți ceilalți sunt înt mplători.

This instant which I cannot leave, which locks me in and limits me on every side, this instant I am made of will be no more than a confused dream.

Superfluity was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these hedges, these paths. Vainly I strove to compute the number of the chestnut trees, or their distance from the Velleda, or their height...

At an age when most children are playing hopscotch or with their dolls,you, poor child, who had no friends or toys, you toyed with dreams of murder, because that is a game to play alone.

Much more likely you’ll hurt me. Still what does it matter? If I’ve got to suffer, it may as well be at your hands, your pretty hands.

The bond between being and non-being can be only internal. It is within being qua being that non-being must arise, and within non-being that being must spring up; and this relation can not be a...

There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Jupiter: I am not your king, impudent larva? Who then has created you?Orestes: You. But you should not have created me free.

We are our choices.